


Sweet

by Zephrbabe



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Avengers' Upstate Facility, F/M, Meet-Cute, the nose Knows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 05:20:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17380352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zephrbabe/pseuds/Zephrbabe
Summary: Steve follows his nose, and Darcy follows her sass.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Dredged from the archives, this 2-parter was written Summer '17. I don't know why it never made it onto AO3, but here it is.

There was something on the air, something sweet.

Steve first caught a whiff of it in the hall outside his quarters, when he was coming in from his morning run. He sniffed his shirt- maybe he’d brushed up against a flowering plant- but that wasn’t it.

After a shower and a quick, protein-heavy breakfast, he headed to a post-debrief meeting in conference room B, passing by one of the common kitchens. The sweet smell of before was in the air, and, curious, he poked around in the small space- barely more than a cupboard and a coffeemaker- but couldn’t find anything that matched what he was smelling.

During the meeting, Steve caught himself rolling his tongue over his soft palate, as though changing the shape of his mouth would give him another breath of whatever that smell was. He shook his head and set his attention back on the discussion.

He forgot all about it through lunch- trying to out-eat Bucky when it came to pot roast was an impossibility even for Steve- and the afternoon training session with some of the formerly-Shield auxiliary staff. The facility might be in an undisclosed location, but no one had any delusions that there wouldn’t be an attack at some point in the future.

With his thoughts on rosters and which skills to emphasize next session, Steve almost missed it- that smell, again so faint he almost thought he was imagining it. He found himself at an intersection of hallways, trying to catch the scent again.

“Hey, Rogers, you get a chance to look at those evals yet?”

Steve grunted a denial as Sam’s approach stirred the air enough that the scent was lost. He put it out of his mind, and went back to work.

At least, he thought he’d put it out of his mind.

He’d woken tangled in his sheets, sweating and breathing hard. Not from a nightmare, but the type of dream he hadn’t experienced since he was an adolescent and first going through the physical and hormonal changes of an Alpha- even if he’d been an uncommonly small, sickly one. Those dreams of pressing between a woman’s thighs, burying himself so deep they couldn’t part, and surrounding himself in her scent and warmth.

Getting back to sleep was pointless; Steve was hard, aching with those visceral senses, and thrumming with energy.

A cold shower shocked him into complete wakefulness, but he was still feeling twitchy, and it was too early to expect anyone to be around. Someone would be awake, Steve knew. Someone was always awake; it was the nature of the facility and the people in it. Steve could always knock on Sam’s or Bucky’s door, too, and they’d be awake with him- they’d done that for each other many times- but this didn’t feel like something he wanted to share.

He could wander around until he found someone who was awake but not busy, or he could go for a run, or visit the gym. Nothing sounded particularly appealing, though. He wasn’t even feeling hungry.

Steve pulled on some exercise clothes, and headed towards the gym. He’d see what he felt like doing once he got there. Maybe the rowing machine. It was reinforced enough that he hadn’t broken it in weeks.

He never made it to the gym.

He walked through a thread of that smell from the day before, and his feet altered course so he might catch the smell again. The trail was winding through the facility, and Steve followed it, curiosity needing to be sated. He couldn’t tell if the smell was stronger or if the lack of people meant it wasn’t as disrupted.

The sweet scent was hardly more than a sensation on the breath, but he followed it as diligently as he’d follow the smell of his mother’s cooking.

The trail led him to the labs. There were quite a few, some of which exuded smells Steve did his best to avoid. He wound through them for a while, trying to find the scent again.

He did, just as movement caught his attention.

Through a door of heavy safety glass, two women were hard at work. One of them rolled back and forth in front of a whiteboard, and the other was elbow-deep in a piece of machinery he couldn’t begin to guess the purpose of.

It was so late it was early, but they looked like they’d been at it for hours. He recalled that Doctor Foster and her assistant, Darcy Lewis, had recently been transferred to the facility as a show of good faith on Stark’s part, but they had been so busy getting set up that hardly anyone had met them yet.

The scent was strongest here, despite the advanced air filtration systems in the lab areas. Steve wanted to breathe it in for a moment before moving on to the gym.

Yeah, just a moment.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Picking up where we left off, but from the other side of the door.

“Hey, Darcy? Is your heat starting soon, by any chance?”

Darcy didn’t look up from her calibrations- she was at the most finicky part, and fuck her if she was going to start over again. “Yeah, in a few days, probably. Maybe a week. It’s not that regular.” She  _finally_  got the nodes set right, and looked up. “Why?”

Jane, her brow creased with her I’ve-got-a-theory-you-won’t-like frown, lifted a finger from her coffee mug to point towards the lab doors.

On the other side of the shatter-resistant glass, as close as he could be without pressing his nose against the door like a kid in front of a Christmas window, stood Steve Rogers. Totally, unmistakeably Steve Rogers- the jawline of freedom, the shoulders of justice, the bubble butt of truth (not that she had an angle on  _that_ ): ultra-Alpha Captain America in street clothes was outside the lab. He was peering in at them as though he were looking for something, occasionally glancing around at the science paraphernalia.

She looked back at Jane. “How long has he been standing there?”

“No idea.”

“What does he want?”

Jane leveled her a look that clearly expressed,  _He is on the other side of a thick glass door and I haven’t moved from my seat in three hours; how would I know?_

“Well it can’t be because of my heat. It hasn’t started yet.” Darcy spluttered at Jane’s quirked eyebrow. “My temperature isn’t even elevated!”

“Body chemistry changes before the average human nose can sense it,” Jane said, turning back to the whiteboard.

Whatever reason Captain America was standing out there, it wasn’t what Jane thought. And Darcy would prove it.

She set down her precision calibration tool- ok, ok, it was a screwdriver- and gave the back of Jane’s head an arch look.

Stretching a crick out of her neck, Darcy stood, and stalked over to the lab door. She pulled it open with  some force.

“What do you want?”

Of course the air currents had been kicked up when the heavy door swung open, and she watched him pull in a deep breath, piercing blue eyes focusing on her. When he straightened up, broadening his stance and breathing deep again, she realized-

He did  _not_  have an average sense of smell.

“You.” The sure rumble of his voice made Darcy’s jaw drop.

No way. They hadn’t even  _met_  yet; Jane had only just gotten her lab moved to the upstate facility from one of Stark’s auxiliary labs in the Bronx, like, two weeks ago. Two weeks of readjusting delicate equipment twelve hours a day wasn’t exactly conducive to being introduced to her superhero neighbors.

Steve seemed to snap out of his fixed, predatory stare. “Uh, I mean- you smell sweet.” He cringed. “I mean, you smell good. To me. I mean- you- uh.”

His shoulders hunched in a little, and he looked like he was already regretting commenting on how an unfamiliar Omega smelled, right to her face. And with good reason: rude as fuck.

Darcy raised her eyebrows, and his face fell. “I hope that didn’t pass for polite conversation in the 1940s, dude.”

“No- no, uh, of course not. I don’t usually- I never- I-”

Oh god, awkward Alpha was her kryptonite. The way a flush was reddening his ears and cheeks, and how he was unsuccessfully trying to make himself look smaller was rapidly edging into adorkable.

Steeling herself with a deep breath, Darcy savored the passing scent of the _virile, unbonded Alpha_  standing right in front of her, and used her best don’t-mess-with-me-buster voice, “It is going to take at least two dates before you have permission to say anything about my scent, got it?”

The surprised relief that bloomed over his face was overtaken by a smile that literally made her knees go weak. “Got it.”

Darcy wanted to draw another lungful of him, but that would be a bit hypocritical.

“Ok, so.” She did indulge in a bit of mild ogling to tide her over. “I am going to go back to work, and if you still want to ask me out when my heat is over, you are going to do that, got it?”

Steve- she could probably think of him as Steve now, right?- let his gaze roam over her for a moment, a silly, pleased smile on his mouth. “Got it.”

Darcy closed the door in his face with a gentle touch. He stayed where he had been, the glass very nearly bonking the nose of liberty. He fucking  _waved_  at her, and turned to go.

When Darcy collapsed into her rolling chair and began digging through her cavernous purse, Jane roused herself from the physics of interstellar travel to ask, “What did he want?”

Darcy didn’t spare her boss a glance, but liberally spritzed herself with scent-canceling spray and vowed to work from home during her heat.

Registering the question, Darcy looked up. “I dunno,” she lied, “but he was kind of sweet.”

**Author's Note:**

> I love getting comments! (Though please keep in mind this fic is complete and I won't be writing any more of it.)


End file.
